WORLD OPINION IS MORE HOSTILE TO AMERICA THAN AT ANY TIME IN OUR HISTORY

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Jimmy
Carter, remains one of America's few eminent strategic thinkers. His
just-published book is "The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership" (Basic Books, 2004). He spoke with Global Viewpoint editor Nathan Gardels
recently.

NATHAN GARDELS: Toward the end of your new book, "The Choice," you state
your thesis: "It is essential for American leadership to recognize that, in
this age of worldwide political awakening and shared international
vulnerability, security depends not only on military power but also on the
prevailing climate of opinion, the political definition of social passions
and the foci of fanatical hatreds."

With the Abu Ghraib photos and the general diplomatic and security debacle
of the Iraq war, hasn't the United States already lost the battle for a
sympathetic climate of world opinion, making itself even more a focus of
hatred than before 9/11?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Yes. And no. Yes, the United States has certainly
harmed itself badly, even dangerously. No, because the battle is a
never-ending one with no final victory or defeat.

It is important for the United States to try to recoup. If not, the
progressive deterioration of America's position will undermine our
leadership and plunge the world into intensifying chaos.

In our entire history as a nation, world opinion has never been as hostile
toward the United States as it is today. In the past, in particular during
the Cold War, there were major waves of anti-Americanism, usually associated
with the left. Today, anti-Americanism is a pervasive global outlook that
embraces both the left and right. Tragically, most of that is
self-inflicted.

It is not only the Iraq policy of the Bush administration that has caused
this. The Bush administration is the first administration since the onset of
the Cold War 50 years ago not to place itself in the political mainstream,
not to reflect moderation, not to practice at least de facto bipartisanship,
but to embrace extremist principles. Inevitably, extremism produces
recklessness. That is what we are seeing now.

GARDELS: You have written about the key global appeal of America's open
society, its democracy and respect for human rights. Now, many abroad --
including China and Arab countries -- see hypocrisy.

How badly has the torture and abuse of Iraqis by American forces damaged
America's credibility and reputation?

BRZEZINSKI: It is very badly damaged. And I have the moral right to say so:
For years I pressed the cause of human rights, even when it was unpopular
back in the 1970s. Also, I have been critical of the Bush project on Iraq
all along, even at time when most Democrats were silent and some were even
cheerleaders.

However, when some of the more egregious violators of human rights abroad
argue now that we are as bad as they are, they forget one central relevant
aspect of all this: What happened in Abu Ghraib prison is repeated on a huge
scale on a daily basis in various gulags around the world.

The difference is that, elsewhere, such sadistic excesses are not usually
exposed by the regimes concerned. Our system, relatively promptly -- within
a few months -- is exposing the crimes and responding with open
investigations and prospective punishments.

The fact of the matter is, it is Americans who have exposed what happened on
their own and it is U.S. senators who are investigating the matter. It is
the U.S. president, of whom I am very critical, who has apologized publicly.
It is Americans who will make sure the guilty will be punished. This same
could not be said about China, or Russia, or many others, including the
Arabs.

GARDELS: There is another aspect of America that, in your view, has not been
so appealing or helpful to the American image abroad -- its mass culture,
which you've labeled "out-of-control secularism" and a "permissive
cornucopia."

On top of these human rights issues now, isn't there necessarily a conflict
between the sensate liberalism of America's postmodern mass culture,
projected globally by the media, and the socially conservative culture of
Islam? When Ayatollah Sistani, the Shiite leader in Iraq, and his followers
see Janet Jackson bare her breast at the Super Bowl, doesn't that provoke
even more anti-American passion?

BRZEZINSKI: Your example, actually, is rather mild considering what else
goes on in American culture and finds its way to the rest of the world.
There is extreme pornography, even on mid-afternoon TV. Many aspects of
American culture are, one has to admit, objectionable, vulgar, disgusting
and morally degrading.

There is thus no doubt that this intensifies the cultural cleavages in the
world. Americans must face this fact because otherwise we are in no position
to criticize other cultures for their religious principles or concerning
relations between the sexes. Some degree of modesty about our own way of
life is called for.

But that does not negate the fact that, by and large, there is a global
trend toward more freedom and more democracy. In many respects, the United
States remains in the forefront of these trends.

GARDELS: In your book, you worry that America's political isolation might
lead to the rise of a "countercreed." It seems to me there are three
candidates.

First, the "get rich is glorious stability" creed of China. Second, the
"quality of life" creed of Europe that rejects American mass consumption
patterns. Three, political Islam that rejects globalized secularism. Given
the damage being done to the United States by Bush's foreign policy, are any
of those candidates in your view?

BRZEZINSKI: All the candidates you mention have the same limitation: They
can't be global creeds. Both China and Europe are inward oriented and don't
generate political passions aside from self-interest. It is very difficult
to see comfortable Europeans waging a global struggle on behalf of five-week
vacations.

Political Islam generates passion, but it is hard to universalize it unless
accompanied by some idea of global conversion to Islam. That will motivate a
few, but it is unlikely to mobilize many in non-Islamic societies.

The countercreed that I fear may be arising is a combination of the
widespread revulsion against globalization as a self-interested process of
the relatively few rich to disempower the poor along with an intensified
anti-Americanism which views the United States as not only the motor of that
unfair globalization but also the source of political and cultural
imperialism.

That outlook can appeal simultaneously to people in Asia as well as Latin
America, in Africa as well as Europe and Russia. This strikes me as a
possibility because of the intensified anti-Americanism that has resulted
from the egregious way that the Bush administration misled the world about
the reasons for war in Iraq, and then the mishandling of the war itself.

GARDELS: What is the American strategy to avoid the rise of this
countercreed?

BRZEZINSKI: Americans need to wake up to the fact that something very
significant has happened in the wake of 9/11. We were all shocked by that,
but then a small group with extremist views exploited that shock and
hijacked American foreign policy. With enormous arrogance and contempt for
others, they embarked on a policy that isolated us from the world as never
before.

The country needs to remember that the previous 60 years of success in
American foreign policy over many administrations came from the rejection of
extremism --both of the right and the left. After 9/11, a group of strategic
extremists managed to gain control of a president with messianic
proclivities and no grasp of the complexity of the global situation.
Their cumulative actions have done unprecedented damage to America's
long-term interests.

That is why there is now the need for a choice: Will America return to the
past successes of global leadership or damage itself critically in the
extremist pursuit of global domination?